First Backyard Bird
by Arthur
Posted on Sunday, February 22nd, 2009 at 12:33 pm CET
We moved into our new digs in Round Lake Beach ten days ago and hadn’t seen a single bird in our backyard. All that changed today when we saw a goldfinch on one of two bird feeders that we put up five days ago.
We have not seen many birds in our neighborhood these last two weeks. Just a few starlings and some geese flying over. It wasn’t until this morning that we saw some near our backyard. First a beautiful red Cardinal was hanging out in the trees behind our fence. He was looking at the feeder, but the feeders are actually not suitable (too small) for a cardinal. We did buy other feeders a couple of days ago but the ground has been too hard to put them in. Then later when I was making breakfast I saw some Dark-eyed Juncos (slate-colored) flying around. I thought that I saw one fly away from our feeder but I wasn’t sure. Then a little bit later we suddenly saw the goldfinch chowing down on seeds.
Male American Goldfinches are vibrant yellow in the summer, and quite different-looking from the European Goldfinches we used to get in our backyard in Holland. Actually, it was exactly one year ago this week that we had our first European Goldfinch in Leiden. It’s funny that one year later its American cousin is our first backyard bird here. 🙂
Here’s a picture of our two feeders right now. The left one is a thistle sack which is specifically for finches. Maybe our resident goldfinch doesn’t know how that works yet.
We moved into our new digs in Round Lake Beach ten days ago and hadn’t seen a single bird in our backyard. All that changed today when we saw a goldfinch on one of two bird feeders that we put up five days ago.
We have not seen many birds in our neighborhood these last two weeks. Just a few starlings and some geese flying over. It wasn’t until this morning that we saw some near our backyard. First a beautiful red Cardinal was hanging out in the trees behind our fence. He was looking at the feeder, but the feeders are actually not suitable (too small) for a cardinal. We did buy other feeders a couple of days ago but the ground has been too hard to put them in. Then later when I was making breakfast I saw some Dark-eyed Juncos (slate-colored) flying around. I thought that I saw one fly away from our feeder but I wasn’t sure. Then a little bit later we suddenly saw the goldfinch chowing down on seeds.
Male American Goldfinches are vibrant yellow in the summer, and quite different-looking from the European Goldfinches we used to get in our backyard in Holland. Actually, it was exactly one year ago this week that we had our first European Goldfinch in Leiden. It’s funny that one year later its American cousin is our first backyard bird here. 🙂
Here’s a picture of our two feeders right now. The left one is a thistle sack which is specifically for finches. Maybe our resident goldfinch doesn’t know how that works yet.